Interview with Joscelyn Gardner for Black Maple magazine

Dr. Charmaine A. Nelson interviews Joscelyn Gardner for the Scholar's Couch in Black Maple magazine (Oct 2023). The interview traces Gardner's professional career in both Barbados and Canada; as an art educator, and as a visual artist whose research-based practice bridges printmaking and multimedia installation. Born and raised in Barbados, Gardner studied Fine Art and Film at Queen’s University, Canada, before returning home to teach and work as an artist. Facing limited artistic resources and institutional support in Barbados, she worked on various art/ museum-related boards, advocated for a national gallery, and established art infrastructure on the island, including the studio Island Impressions and later The Art Foundry gallery.

After moving to Canada in 2000 and completing her MFA at Western University, Gardner began teaching at Fanshawe College and continued her artistic career internationally. She founded Print London and The Ontario Miniature Print Exhibition (TOMPE) to promote printmaking in London, Ontario. Her work—exhibited in museums and biennials across Europe, the Americas, and the Caribbean—interrogates the legacies of slavery, colonialism, and gender through archival research and imaginative reconstruction. She explores difficult historical material with sensitivity, focusing on female resilience and the relationships between Black and white Creole women.

Recent projects include a 16mm film about Mark Pearce, a man living sustainably on a Barbadian beach, and Songs of Innocence and Experience, a print folio inspired by a c.1858 ambrotype of a Black nanny and her white charge. Gardner’s practice is grounded in care, historical empathy, and ecological consciousness.

Read the interview HERE.